The Heartland states on their website that:”The Heartland Institute, a 25-year-old national nonpartisan think-tank based in Chicago, said all of the event’s expenses will be covered by admission fees and individual and foundation donors to Heartland. No corporate dollars or sponsorships earmarked for the event were solicited or accepted.”

Yah.

Of course, the whole thing becomes a little more gray when you look into the listed “co-sponsors” of the Heartland’s event, or should I say a little slick.

We’ve researched the funding history of all the organizations that the Heartland Institute has listed as co-sponsors for their 2009 International Conference on Climate Change and have found that over the years these groups have received in excess of $47 million from oil companies and right-wing foundations.

Interesting enough, the vast majority of the funding (76%) is not from who most would expect, but from a much quieter organization called the Scaife Family of Foundations. According the Media Transparency project, the Scaife Family of Foundations is, “financed by the Mellon industrial, oil and banking fortune. At one time its largest single holding was stock in the Gulf Oil Corporation. [Scaife] Became active in funding conservative causes in 1973, when Richard Mellon Scaife became chairman of the foundation.”

Previous Comments

I’ve been guessing the foundations were more important for a while, and warning people of that, but this is an even higher percentage than I expected. Thanks for the good work tracking this stuff down!

I gew up near Pittsburgh, and used torun computer programs in *Scaife* Hall at Carnegie-*Mellon* University, i..e., postiive contributions of science and technology. Too bad that Richard Mellon Scaife has chosen other routes.

Kevin, it seems that a few of these think tanks share more than funding sources – they’ve shown up on Frank Bi’s Twisty Maze of Think Tanks with the same IP addresses and host servers. Talk about an echo chamber?

I think an interesting exercise will be to examine the flow of money between the various groups, and compare this flow to how the groups are mapped out over the Internet.

Interestingly, the Alternate Solutions Institute (asinstitute.org), which received money from Atlas (atlasusa.org) in 2008, has moved from 198.161.90.18 – same IP as atlasusa.org – to 72.32.118.7, which is the IP for the Atlas project Un Monde Libre:

[Scalfe and Larry’s] involvement in what became known as “the Arkansas Project” – an aggressive and ultimately fruitless attempt to discredit a sitting president – marked a clear departure from years of relatively anonymous philanthropy, and Scaife could not have foreseen the consequences: He became a celebrity.

The full realization of the trouble he had made for himself probably came one day last September when he appeared, under subpoena, before a federal grand jury in Fort Smith, Ark., that was investigating possible tampering with a federal witness. On that day, Scaife could have felt he was being treated like a suspect – not the status a Mellon from Pittsburgh worth perhaps a billion dollars expects. According to several associates, Scaife was furious.

The Arkansas Project was apparently cooked up largely by Larry, 63, who has worked for Scaife for 30 years. A former Marine with a deeply ideological view of the world, Larry had developed a powerful dislike for Clinton. “I noticed a change in Dick Larry – at the mention of Clinton he became almost hyperthyroid,” said one prominent figure in the conservative world who knows Larry well. A second prominent conservative close to him said: “I never saw Dick Larry do anything like this before. The only thing I can figure is that Larry dislikes Clinton intensely.”

MoveOn, Michael Moore and large elements of the Democratic party have been on a witchhunt for the last 8 years. They still believe the 2000 election was ‘stolen’ from them and have spread that fabricated smear to the public for years.

Scaife is one of the “Four Sisters” who own the Heritage Foundation and AEI, “think tanks” that have been bamboozling Americans with bizarre misinformation for four decades now (Koch owns the similar Cato). In addition, the Sisters created or took over publications like Commentary and First Things, which scoop up people who are e.g. anti-abortion or pro-Israel and brainwash them into being e.g. global warming deniers and pro wealth gap and corporate malfeasance. This is why anti-abortionists always seem bizarrely to be supply siders as well. The Sisters also fund everything David Horowitz does as well as the Spectator, which I don’t believe ever made money and probably never had any purpose other than to destroy Bill Clinton.

In my opinion, the Sisters are much more dangerous that Murdoch because they are so under the radar for most Americans. For instance, you always have somebody from Heritage spewing their bullshit on the News Hour, but anybody who knows anything about Heritage knows it amounts to the same as televising an “expert” from Lyndon Larouche’s Executive Intelligence Review.

The argument that paul s keeps trying to make about how much (or little) per capita the oil money represents is pathetic. Look at the annual frenzy over Super Bowl ads. Coca Cola spends $X gazillion on a 45 second ad. Divide that by the anticipated viewership and, voila: they spent $1.25 US per person. A tiny per capita investment can be pretty effing significant, or they wouldn’t bother spend $X gazillion on the ad. Marketters know this. Put your money where it will get the most bang for the buck. The deniers also know this.

Please stop striking the same note, paul s. We heard you the first time, and it stopped there.

My analysis is simple and accurate FEMACK. One can not create enough noise or sufficient disinformation for a penny per person. It can not be done. It is impossible. No one here has ever shown evidence it can be done, yet the myth lives. Why?

because when you have a population of +300million and two or three tv’s and/or computers in every other house, the pennies add up pretty quickly. And like so many other things, it’s not the size that matters, it’s what you do with it. But enough, already. Lift your head up for a moment and look around. We’ve moved on.

Oh, sure, it definitely can’t be because AGW is a real problem, can it?

So instead of wasting money attacking imaginary problems such as AGW, we should instead wisely spend the money by focusing on the real problems that face the world today… such as the ever-looming threat of the Worldwide Phantom Soviet Empire.

Climate change inactivists such as Senator Inhofe keep complaining about not having the same amount of money as those filthy hippie greens, but they never say what they’re going to do with that amount of money if they do get it.

Are they going to buy some nice big supercomputers to run climate models and show the IPCC to be completely wrong?

Or are they going to just spend it all on noise campaigns like they’ve been doing?

Strictly speaking, Paul’s correct, but it’s an idiotic comparison. He’s comparing per-capita expenditures for lobbyists (“a penny per person”) to total expenditures from green groups and government (“spend a lot more than a penny per year”, note lack of “per person”). Disingenuous, Paul.

Since when did the amount of money spent by green groups and governments specifically to promote AGW become ‘common knowledge’? Heck, even the research Kevin did for this thread tracking down the amount of money spent by the denialists took some effort, and would scarcely be considered some kind of background ‘common knowledge’. At present, there is no ‘common knowledge’ that exists about the exact amount of money spent by either side.

Your assertion that the denier side is being out-spent by its opponents rests on several assumptions: 1) The definition of a green group… (legislative lobbyists? environmental organizations? green energy busniesses? Al Gore?, book publishers? anyone who agrees with AGW?, etc.) I know several Social Ecologists who don’t believe in AGW and think it’s all a plot to institute population control. 2) That the amount of money could be a knowable entity (it’s difficult enough keeping track of the denier funding, and even that amount is only what has been openly declared) 3) That the amount of money earmarked specifically to ‘promote AGW’ could be known apart from campaigns to promote energy conservation in general, or promote wilderness conservation in general, or promote fighting air pollution in general. 4) That governments actually ‘promote AGW’. Last time I checked, Harper was agnostic about the cause of climate change, unlike, say, Sarah Palin’s Alaskan government. I seriously doubt there is ANY government money being spent specifically to promote the idea of AGW in a targeted political campaign (unless, of course, you consider any form of government funded scientific research into climate change to be ‘promotion of AGW’). And if there is such quantifiable amounts of government money, it certainly wouldn’t constitute ‘common knowledge’.

Your excuse that you would need to ‘spend days gathering stats to show something that is common knowledge’ is not only incoherent, it’s sandbagging.

Paul s, the groups who give out money to spread lies and disinformation (listed in Kevin’s post above) really don’t spend very much since the cretins that work for them are easily satisified and boast (e.g. Tim Ball) that they don’t get very much. Plus other cretins like you who spread the lies and disinformation for nothing (or at least that is what you claim) means that they get widespread distribution of their lies and misinformation for a very low expenditure of cash.

The Government and Green Groups you so deprecatingly refer to actually spend the majority of their money on conducting research or supporting others who do do actual research. The last time I looked at a Government Grant or Contract application there was no line item for “PR expenditures”. Therefore these groups (Governments and Green groups) do not spend enough counteracting the lies and disinformation put out by you are your ilk.

As I have asked you many times before, why are you so anti-science and anti-scientist?

so nice to see you posting. have you ever met anyone on the skeptic side that wasn’t a moron. btw, where did algore get the $300,000,000 he is spending on his “campaign?” and thanks for outing me as a dentist! if you would have asked i certainly would have let u know…and if i knew my ip address i would have made it readily available…btw, i have a B.S. in geology from the C. O. Wooster and my field work was done at Princeton Univ. Dental school at Howard Univ.. next time just ask, i have nothing to hide.

To answer your rhetorical question, no I have never met an AGW denier who was not a moron, especially ones who claim to have a science background. That makes them both dishonest and moronic.

Your posts show that you are a fully fledged member of the AGW denier band of deceitful morons. You do not once provide any scientific evidence to back up your claims but spout the regurgitated rubbish which was dismissed by all intelligent people years ago. You are nothing but a useless troll.

For those who are new to DeSmogBlog, the history of denial is long and despicable. The modern denial industry has its now infamous roots in the Tobacco Industry’s subversive disinformation campaign intended to discredit science that threatened the tobacco industry’s business. When the disgraceful tactics were discovered, all the papers were archived on www.tobaccodocuments.org as a record of the lies and deceit.

A number of those individuals transferred their efforts from disputing and denying the link between smoking and cancer; to disputing and denying the link between Fossil-fuels, CO2 and climate change. Basically, they followed the money.

Here are links that reveal some of the people and organisations that were active in the Tobacco Industry denial industry.

No: it just says Heartland saysthey didn’t take money from corporations earmarked for this event.

1) They may get money from corporations to do what they do. I.e., when they pitch foundations, I’m sure they describe their activities, including saying how successful their conferences are.

2) they may get money from other foundations, which may have gotten money from corporations or yet other foundations.

Remember, Hearltand has long gotten tobacco funding, i.e., from an idnustry that only exists because it remains able to get children addicted to nicotine while their brains are forming. Few smokers start when adults (say >21), and even if they do, are much more able to stop than those who started in their teens. Hence, nothing they do should be a surprise.

I assume this is what Kevin was working from, but while Heartland no longer says where its money comes from, except that its mostly fondations, the Sarah Scaife and related (Allegheny, Carthage) foundations’ gifts for the last few years are here:

Given that some foundations end up cosponsoring or acting as conduits for money, it is nontrivial to figure out where money actually came from oriignally, but it is clear that Scaife, Koch, Olin, and a few others supply a lot of the foundation money. It’s very cost-effective compared to buying primte-time commercials saying “use more oil and coal”.

this is a hopeless and small group who will only berate you. not really worth the effort. did algore say he has a $300,000,000 warchest to promote agw?? where did he get that money? sorry i can’t site it but algore did say it…oh wait..he is a liar so i will try to find a source.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.